The present invention relates to a technology for removing a virus infection in a file system.
In recent years, there has been a growing trend of large-scale storage device systems in association with an increase in the amount of information. When many users concurrently share a file server, access to files slows down and a problem arises with security of data to be accessed. For example, when a file in the file server is infected with a computer virus, many users are adversely affected.
To prevent damage due to virus infection, virus-detecting software (herein referred to as a virus scanner) is installed in a storage system to check, each time a file is accessed, whether or not a file is virus-infected. A large-scale file server is required to improve the virus scanner performance. A conventional technology for improving the virus scanner performance is used to determine whether or not to apply a process (hereafter referred to as a scan) for detecting a virus. Specifically, the technology searches a list of scanned files and omits a scan for a file that is found in the list. For example, such technology is disclosed in “Antivirus Scanning Best Practices Guide” by John Phillips at http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3107.html.